


exit wound

by autoclaves



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical Horror, Gen, House at 105 Hill Top Road (The Magnus Archives), apocalypse machine go brrr, on stories and legacies and the narrative construct, purposefully undertagged; check endnotes for more detailed warnings, s5 prediction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:28:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27472003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/autoclaves/pseuds/autoclaves
Summary: Suppose there is a house on a hilltop. Suppose there is a story. There is always a story, and every universe is always expanding.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	exit wound

**Author's Note:**

> is 105 hill top road actually on a hilltop? i don't think so, but for Reasons (Reasons being I Like The Hilltop Motif) it is in my fic!
> 
> this is purposefully undertagged because i feel like it better serves the story for readers to come in without knowing the full setup. i urge you to check the endnotes if you're looking to avoid a particular trigger.

Suppose there is a house on a hilltop. Suppose there is a story. There is always a story, and every universe is always expanding. You, dear reader, are proof of concept. 

— 

The girl on the hilltop raises her hand, closes it into a fist, and knocks the fist against the wood of the blue-grey door of the house. She wields the fist like a weapon. It is not her fault; the girl is scared, and only human. In worlds where fear is not yet the baseline for what it means to feel human, it is easy to let such things overtake you without a fight, to lose yourself in them and call it courageous instead of monstrous. 

On the other side of the blue-grey door is a man. Not a Stranger marked as other with a capital letter at the front—wrong fear, reader—but a stranger nonetheless. He has nondescript features. He has greying hair, but an unlined face, and kind hands, but eyes that flicker and fade sometimes. Not a tender fade in the way of aging color; they fade like he’s gone somewhere. Like he is alone, and has been, for a while. Such contradictions are allowed to exist in this liminality of a place. 

Dear reader, do you understand what it means to be liminal? To be the threshold but never the home, the cliff’s edge but never the fall, to think you are safe, only to look back and see the crack in the wound of the world following your steps like a watchdog, its existence undecided until your gaze decides to fall upon it, to enter a house and have it be a mouth instead, or a fist that meets your own with double the violence— 

No. That comes later. First: the girl. The door. The man, a stranger, who does not hate many things but has come to almost gently resent the door, the reminder of it. Remember this. It will be important later. These are the roles they have been assigned, although roles, like titles, are permutable. 

For a moment, the universe is silent. Somewhere, what used to be a butterfly beats its wings. The girl says, her lips thinning to hide their trembling, “They said you could help me.” 

— 

Other universes are better equipped to deal with such things; they have archives, and institutions, entire histories of fear to draw upon. In this one, there is only a man in a house on a hilltop, and you go to him for help, when the monsters beneath the bed take up too much space to fathom. 

“There is something wrong with the one I love,” the girl continues, because she is fearful, and in this universe, it makes her courageous. 

“Come in,” the man says. The door unhinges like a mouth, so she comes in. The door shuts. Not like a mouth, this time, but a separation. 

— 

“Would you like some tea?” 

His question surprises the girl, and she is unable to contain the fact. She is not used to hiding, because she has not had to do so until several weeks ago, when nonsensical things had begun happening to the one she loves. (The girl is twenty-one. The man is older than he seems, and more importantly, has seen more things than it appears he would have—they will remain the girl and the one she loves in his mind until they, too, have surpassed him in not age, but horror. His job is to ensure that does not happen; his self-assigned role, if you will.) 

“It’s just tea,” he says. “I haven’t poisoned it, if that’s what you’re afraid of.” 

Afraid: what a loaded word. 

“I’m not afraid,” the girl tells him, words almost automatic. We are trained to say these things. To say anything else would be unthinkable. “It’s just—it’s just. You caught me off guard.” 

There is a pause. The man begins to make tea. 

“What do I call you?” 

Clever girl. When you name a thing, you make it quantifiable. You know what must be done to protect it, and you know what must be done to kill it. 

“My name is—” the man begins. No. Stop. Rewind. 

“I am called—” the man begins. Rewind. Forget this happened. 

“I am the Archivist,” he says. The light slips from the overhead sky like the closing of an endless pupil, but nobody notices. Nobody said it was this sky, this light. There are other universes far stranger than this one, and other stories, too. 

— 

Let us reassess our roles, permutable as they may be. The girl. The door. The Archivist, a stranger. The tea he offers, his kind hands, the shelves of books that line the walls of his home. 

There are things in this story that don’t make sense. A lingering tug at the back of the mind, a string of reality about to unravel. 

— 

The girl, too, is familiar with stories. They are rarely about girls like her, but at the same time, are close enough to learn from. In them, the intrepid protagonist journeys to save the people she loves. Omniscient magicians in possession of wise-sounding titles guide her along her path, and bargain for a price in return. Oftentimes, the price will not be what our protagonist expects—the girl knows this well. 

She takes a deep breath and allows the air to congeal in her lungs before she speaks. One more moment for the fear to make itself a home. 

“There is no price, or whatever you’re thinking of,” the Archivist says, his words hastening to occupy the space before she exhales. The air escapes her throat with a nearly inaudible hiss. “My services are free of charge.” Somehow, the tea is done right on time, and he hands her a mug of it without seeming to move much at all. The mug is chipped, and pale blue, and has a pattern of darker blue flowers printed around the rim. The tea inside is warm; it is just tea. 

— 

“Here is what you must do,” the Archivist begins. He looks terrible, and weary, and soft, all at once. 

— 

The girl clutches a half-empty mug of tea between her palms and stares at the Archivist. His kind hands and his hungry eyes that refuse to take anything else. He stares, but not back at her; only at the far wall over her shoulder. When the girl turns her head to see, there is a shelf of poetry books marking out the place where his gaze falls. Keats and Eliot, and other names she doesn’t recognize despite the nagging feeling that she should. In another universe, she might have, reader. 

“You’ve saved someone I love,” she says. “You don’t take repayment, and I’m only human, but—” 

An interlude to wonder, does the Archivist have someone he loves? Remember: resentment is a bitter word, polished smooth with time, and the Archivist feels it most frequently about the door that is a mouth that is a separation that is a door. That kind of named ache spawns from sorrow, spawns from love. There are things about this story that don’t make sense. They don’t belong. To be a stranger, that is what indicates the absence of belonging, a displacement from what was originally yours. 

“Only human is still plenty enough.” It is not a threat; it is meant to be reassurance, but comes out as simply fact, because the Archivist knows it to be the truth. Call it Knowing, or maybe even experience. He is also only human. He lives to tell this story anyway. 

— 

“Perhaps I can tell you a story.” 

“Would you gain anything from it?” 

“Some stories,” the Archivist says, “must be told. Even if they don’t exist.” 

Dear reader, how can stories that have someone to tell them fail to exist? How can people that have someone to love them fail to live? The girl nods almost involuntarily. Such contradictions are allowed to exist in this place, at least. 

— 

“This is a story about doors,” he says, and then the Archivist laughs and laughs, a dry, human sound. 

“Forgive me,” he explains, after he has finished laughing. “It’s just that doors have never been my domain. Quite the opposite. And here I am, telling the only story I will ever tell, and it is about doors.” 

The tea has not quite grown cold yet. There is time. 

— 

An interlude disguised as a story, or maybe a story disguised as an interlude. Dear reader, you can choose. It won’t change the story, or the interlude. Continue on, intrepid protagonist. Once more unto the breach, or the mouth, or the wound, or—see, we will argue semantics all day given the chance. Rewind. Play. 

— 

The Archivist doesn’t dream anymore, but if he did, it would be about this. It is the end of the world. This world? Remember, there are other universes. 

He is with the one he loves—stop. Pause. Don’t you dare say his name. When you name a thing, even if the thing is a person, depending on the story, you will make it quantifiable. You know what must be done to protect it, and you know what must be done to kill it. This story has already happened. Nonetheless, the Archivist will remain wary. 

The sky is stained scarlet and orange, fading light turned sickly under the gaze of the bulging Eye that now inhabits the empty space above them. Do you know what the Eye is? No, that universe wouldn’t. Here, there is no border to show where the sky ends and the Eye begins, or if there is, it hurts to look at. The Eye, the Eye, the Eye: its boundless scale, the nonsensical way it evades the mind. It may have been Beholding that staked its claim first, but every horror and hunger is the same in the end. Every fear bleeds into one. 

The person the Archivist loves is mute now. Perhaps his voice serves no purpose in their story. He’d begun coughing the day before, and by dawn, he could barely get out a handful of words without his throat closing up as if to choke him. The Archivist had held him through the hacking, the awful sounds he’d made while he tried to regain control over a body that wasn’t truly his to throw away anymore. There had been no meaningful last words. No narrative. Not a bang but a whimper. 

— 

The tape recorders started appearing soon afterwards. Someone has to keep narrating the story, just as someone else must keep telling it. And there are many ways to be a narrator when one knows everything there is to know. 

— 

The dream shifts. Dream-logic is not like other kinds of logic; it is permutable. It responds, mostly to desire. Perhaps you will understand it best like this: it is the end of a world, and things work strangely. We think we recognize strangeness until we are faced with the reality of it. We don’t know the meaning of the word displace until an external force wrenches us out of the dreamscape like a bone from a socket, or light from a wound. 

Suppose there is a house on a hilltop. Before, we came to the understanding that there is always a story. Perhaps that is misleading—there is also always a house on a hilltop. This house and this hilltop are the crack in the wound of the world from which everything else is built around. 

Dear reader, this is not the story you thought you were in. 

“What happened?” the girl asks, but nobody hears. The Archivist is telling a story, and there will be no interruptions. Remember, there are other universes, and girls who need voices in those, too. Don’t fret, reader. She will get back her voice soon enough. It is not a permanent displacement, unlike the Archivist in the house on a hilltop. 

Rewind. Forget this happened. You weren’t supposed to hear it, not yet. 

— 

A lingering tug at the back of the mind, a string of reality about to unravel. There are things in this story that don’t make sense; a back-to-front jumbling. 

— 

The Archivist and the one he loves enter through a grey-blue door. Neither of them are fond of doors, really, but the end of the world makes for strange logic and stranger alliances. You would not know what the Spiral is, not by that same name—suffice to say that at any rate, this is not a fear-door; it simply a regular one. Behind it is a house on a hilltop, littered with tape recorders. 

The thing about tape recorders is that they record. An obvious enough fact, obvious enough to make you want to laugh when it is presented as such, but have you, dear reader, ever truly considered it? A tape recorder is an echo of voice. A preservation of things that are better left forgotten, a mimicry of intimacy. Of little use except to the ones who no longer have any voice in the narrative. 

The girl does not interrupt again, and the story continues. 

The one the Archivist loves picks up a tape recorder. By dream-logic, by desire, it clicks on. 

— 

There is a spider, and a confrontation. The universe splits. This is the wound, the only one there ever was. You already know how this ends. 

— 

The girl is familiar with stories. Rest assured that she, at least, already knows how this ends. When there is a door, and through the door lies a wound, the only way to proceed is to mend the wound. But because the story demands it, there is also a price. 

Oftentimes, the price will not be what our protagonist expects. He will come in ready to bargain himself and have to watch the narrator bleed out on the floor instead. How do you fathom that: the ripping away of the fourth and last wall, the one person supposed to know everything turning out to be human after all, the terror of watching the one you love die for a price that you were bracing yourself to pay— 

Have you never wondered why the Archivist is adamant on the issue of price? What has to happen to a person, to an Archivist, that he would never demand such a thing from you? 

— 

Let us reassess our roles. 

Reader. Narrator. Protagonist. 

You understand your role. Do you understand theirs? 

— 

Rewind. The one the Archivist loves picks up a tape recorder. There are many ways to be a narrator when you know everything there is to know, and with wretched dream-logic, tape recorders click on around you. 

The voice is not his own, but it will do for now. _“I wanted it. I wanted it more than anything I’d ever—”_ Rewind. Another statement, a different one. _“This is my choice. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”_

Rewind. A voice so similar to the one it is imitating—male, British, a London accent and a dry way of enunciating its vowels—that the Archivist hurts as he watches the one he loves clutch the tape recorder in his hands like a lifeline. _“I couldn’t let it hurt him, so I… made a choice. Looking back—no. I can’t look back. It’s done, isn’t it?”_

Rewind. The recording breaks up into fragments and a new one begins. 

_“And it’s like… I’m trying to tell him I love him, that of course I forgive him, no matter what happens, but the words are—wrong, stuck, somehow”_ —a frantic click, a harsh whirring like the tape is running out, has reached its end— _“love, love, forgive—I’m trying to tell him I, words, wrong—stuck, forgive—love—love—love—”_

A final click, and the Archivist’s own voice starts playing, coming from the tape recorder that now serves as a mouth for the one he loves. _“I really loved you, you know—”_ says the Archivist. A mimicry of intimacy. The answering voice has been rendered unintelligible by a snarl of static, crackling fire overlaying the in-between places where it should have existed. 

— 

This is not the story you thought you were in. 

— 

You were warned, dear reader. Roles, like titles, are permutable things. You were warned. You were told you would understand. Narrator and protagonist. You must have suspected—the story has always been coming here. 

The Archivist before he was the Archivist. Is that blasphemy even to consider? But we must admit, the title is a borrowed thing in his mouth. So now the question remains, who had he borrowed it from? 

— 

The Archivist and the one he loves. 

_“I really loved you, you know,”_ says the recorder, his own voice and his own words. 

“Live, please. Live,” he begs, hands stuttering as the Eye screams high above them. Every hunger and horror is the same. Jon’s head goes still in his lap, but his eyes remain open, fixed like glass. 

Rewind, and it’s his voice whispering back at him from a tape recorder again. Jon’s grip slackens until it hits the floor with a colorless thud. “ _Live, please. Live.”_ A final plea turning his own words back against him. There is a wound in the house on the hilltop, the crack the world is built around. To go through, you must first open a grey-blue door. 

Martin closes Jon’s eyes for him. He lives. 

— 

The Archivist escapes through the wound and ends up a stranger. The Archivist escapes through the wound and ends up the Archivist. Either way, he is behind a blue-grey door now; the house on the hilltop is his, for lack of a better owner to fill the role. The story has always been coming here, dear reader. 

— 

The difference between door and wound: you can come back from one of these things, but not the other. It doesn’t matter now. One leads to the other in any story. 

— 

The girl finds her voice again. Her tea is cold now, and the bookshelves more foreign than they had been even a minute ago. 

Somewhere, what used to be a butterfly beats its wings, and a hurricane rages across a fear-husk of a universe. Don’t fret, dear reader. The end of one universe does not mean the end of any other, not when there are sacrifices made and wounds mended and stories jumbled front-to-back. Prices paid so other people don’t have to. 

In this universe, there is no Jonathan Sims. But there is an Archivist in a house on a hilltop, and you go to him for help when the monsters beneath the bed take up too much space to fathom. His services are free of charge. 

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings: major character death, canon-typical beholding/eye horror imagery, mentions of loss of bodily autonomy (let me know if you feel i should add anything else!)


End file.
